Dea et Machina
by Spartaku
Summary: When the Crucible activated, the Reapers didn't die,rather they simply...retreated, ceasing all hostilities and fleeing with their twisted minions to the dark corners of the Galaxy, for reasons few if any understood. What none knew was that when the Crucible fired, the heroine of the Galaxy who used it, Cornelia Shepard, she changed. She became more than man OR machine, more...god.


Author's notes: As anyone who has ever looked at my favorited stories here on will know, I am a huge fan of BioWare's sci-fi trilogy masterpiece that is Mass Effect. And as anyone who has played the Mass Effect trilogy through its entirety also knows, the final ending left...much to be desired. Not only did the ending choice feel a tiny bit arbitrary, but all the various general ending scenarios left so many more questions regarding the fate of the Normandy's crew and the Galaxy at large than the ones that they answered. So my first Mass Effect fic is aimed at answering what happened next, and I hope you enjoy reading this first chapter as much as I did writing it.

As those who have read my other stories know, a few months ago, I announced that I was putting all my current writing projects on hiatus to work on a few new ones, while . This is the beggining of hopefully many chapters of Dea et Machina, the last product of that hiatus. The other two projects, while both one-shots that are now complete, are in the former case not a fanfic, and in the latter one I judged unsuitable for being put up here. Anyway, I hope you readers enjoy this chapter as much as I did writing it!

Now, disclaimer time (ugh): Mass Effect, along with its wonderful lore and characters, belong to Bioware and (shudders) EA. I do not own them, nor do I claim to. Now, with that out of the way, I present to you the first chapter of Dea et Machina!

The Turian

The last thing the Banshee saw before its own swirling biotic energy tore it apart in death was the deceptively slender barrel of his sniper rifle. Garrus pulled the trigger, and the bullet buried itself deep in the skull of the Reaper-warped Asari, ending its tormented existence. _Another one down, Spirits know how many more left,_ he thought as he replaced the expended thermal clip in his Mantis rifle with a fresh one.

The wails of another Banshee turned his attention to his left, and he Turian swore. He dove forward, propping his rifle upon one of the many pieces of rubble that lay in the ruined streets, and zoomed in his sights on the monstrous face of the creature. Almost through muscle memory, he sent a pulse of electricity from his omni-tool at the creature with his right hand, steadying his rifle with his left. The electromagnetic barriers generated by the absurdly powerful biotics of the Banshee fizzled and died as they were overloaded with the static burst, and one of the three talons on his right hand squeezed the trigger of the faithful rifle. A single round, accelerated to absurd speeds by tiny mass effect field generators within the rifle, zoomed from the turian's gun across the war-torn city block, and Garrus Vakarian's holographic eyepiece added yet another mark to his impressive tally of headshot kills.

"Garrus, look out!" a piercing, feminine voice called out, in those tones with just the right balance between the smooth vocalizations of an Asari huntress and the rasp of a stern but caring Turian commander who would defend those under their command to the death, tones that Garrus had over 3 and a half years come to know as those of the woman he loved. Then she vaulted over the broken windowsill of a dilapidated shop to his left, resplendent in her N7 battle armour, the fire of battle tempered by obvious concern and, if Garrus or she would actually admit it, fear, in her green eyes. Blood, some blue, some red, stained her light brown hair, but it did nothing to mar the vision of a beautiful, Human angel of death charging across the battlefield to him.

"Get down!" she shouted again, and Garrus' mandibles abruptly closed as he whipped around. 6 Cannibals, the bloated foot soldiers the Reapers had made out of the Batarians, began peppering the air around him with bullets. A few rounds made splashes in the air right in front of his chest, as his shields prevented them from reaching their target. The Turian dove behind a fallen slab of concrete, as the Human woman's hands glowed a deep blue, quickly shooting out a swirling orb of dark energy at the charging Cannibals.

Though they both dove to cover before the orb reached its target, Garrus smiled as he heard the telltale boom of the biotic singularity activating. The Turian sniper glanced up, grinning as the bloated monstrosities snarled in anger, levitating helplessly. "Thanks, Shepard." Garrus said, catching his breath.

"No problem. Would you like to do the honors?" the woman said, offering him the grip of her pistol. Garrus took the firearm in his talons and whirled it around, executing the helpless Reaper pawns with a headshot apiece.

"Anything for you, sweetheart." he said, tossing her back the pistol.

"Oho?" Shepard responded, chuckling. "You know I let that little insubordination of yours back at the base fall within your REACH, but if you don't follow your own order my FLEXIBILITY on that might be tested." she winked at him, and for a moment Garrus was thankful that the Turian equivalent of blushing wasn't as visibly apparent as it was for Humans and Asari. _If we survive this, Shepard,_ he thought, _you and I are taking a long vacation, just the two of us._

An earth-shaking roar behind the pair broke the battlefield flirtation, however. "Whoever kills that Brute is owed a round of drinks when we get back, Shepard?" Garrus offered, recognizing the sound as that of one of the hulking Krogan-Turian hybrids the Reapers used as living tank

He flicked the switch to load his Mantis rifle with armor-piercing rounds, as Shepard smacked a new heat sink into her Paladin. "You're on, Garrus." she replied cockily, as her free hand began to glow with biotic energy.

Together, Turian and Human moved forward towards the sound of the Brute, weapons at the ready. Shepard held up an armored fist, and then pointed to a closed door to an abandoned shop, where the roar had come from. Garrus nodded, and the pair silently cover each other's approach to the door, each flattening themselves against the scarred concrete wall on its sides. Another roar, much louder, came from behind the door, though there was a different sound to it. _The damn thing sounds almost distressed,_ the Turian thought. _Good, it should be afraid when the galaxy's best marksman is after it._

He leaned the sniper rifle on his shoulder and raised his three talons, counting down to zero. When the last one folded back, Shepard kicked the door open and bolted into the abandoned shop, pistol at the ready. Garrus followed right behind her, but his mandibles drooped and his gun fell to his side as they entered. A four-eyed being in ornate red armor stood in the middle of the room, a miasma of greenish-blue biotic energy extending from his gloved fingers to the Brute they had come for. The hybrid monster gave one last, piteous cry, before the tearing forces the channeled biotics applied to its very internal structure finished the job, and the Brute slumped over. Its slayer turned his diamond-shaped head to his comrades, and flashed them a small, toothy grin. "Commander, Turian. Unless I heard incorrectly, I believe you both owe me what passes for drinks in this cycle."

Neither Shepard nor Garrus could resist the light chuckle that escaped them both at the Prothean's comment despite their surroundings. "I guess we do, Javik." Garrus said. "A toast to defeating the Reapers, on me!"

"We still have to defeat them first." Shepard said, as the hauntingly artificial growl of the massive Destroyer-class Reaper just 100 meters away shook the building they stood in. The Human put a finger to the side of her visor. "EDI, how much time until you align those Thanix Missiles? We just finished up the latest wave, but I don't think Archangel here has enough ammo for another!" _I have NOT been wasting ammo,_ Garrus thought, elbowing her slightly.

"The sync-up with the Normandy's targeting systems will be complete within approximately 30 seconds, Shepard." the synthesized voice of their resident AI came through the squad's comm channel.

"So, 30 seconds of relaxation before we blow that Reaper into a billion pieces?" Garrus said. As it happened, a bullet whizzed past his face, missing his shield by centimeters, and more than one telltale shriek of a Banshee echoed across the ruined street behind them, where the missiles awaited their targeting sync. _Spirits, why did I say that..._

"Perhaps not!" Javik snarled, unholstering the Prothean beam rifle on his back and dashing in the direction of the wails.

"Everyone, defensive positions!" Shepard ordered, taking cover behind the doorframe, her armor positively glowing with biotic energy as she readied for battle. "We are NOT letting them reach those missiles before they fire!"

The next 30 seconds were some of the longest of Garrus' life. The motions of reloading, of sighting the skull of another target, of pulling a trigger, became almost mechanical. Perched on a pile of debris next to the missiles that were their only hope of clearing the way to the Citadel and from there activating the Crucible superweapon that would annihilate the hundreds of Reapers in orbit and the the thousands across the galaxy, the Turian found his mind occupied by nothing but the battle, covering his squadmates. Especially Shepard, though the soldier in him that was drilled into Garrus during the mandatory period of military service all Turians underwent rebelled against this preference in the middle of a warzone. The soldier lost out, though, to the well of emotion the Human woman had built inside his chest. _None of you,_ Garrus snarled, as he fired a round high-powered enough to go through one side of the chest cavity in the living artillery of the Reapers known as Ravagers and out the other, _will lay a finger on her!_

A Husk, the cyborg-zombies the Reapers seemed so fond of making out of Humans, leaped to tackle Shepard as she disintegrated a pack of Cannibals with a biotic flare. _Headshot._ A Marauder primed a nasty-looking grenade, ready to throw it at Javik, who was mowing down a group of Husks with sharp lances of blazing green energy. _Headshot._ Another Cannibal was performing the activity that earned them their name on one of its dead comrades, absorbing the creature it was feeding on as armor plating, unnoticed by the rest of the squad as they desperately tried to keep a Banshee away from the missiles. A smoking hole soon formed in the center of its skull. _Headshot_ , _headshot_ , _headshot_. "The missiles have been synced with my targeting systems and corrected for atmospheric variances, Shepard." EDI's artificially feminine voice came over the comm. "You may fire when ready."

There was little cause for celebration, however. Javik was locked in a duel with one of the Banshees, each trading blasts of deadly biotic energy, with neither possessing a clear advantage. It was when his eyes found Shepard that Garrus felt his heart stop, however. The brown-haired woman was panting heavily, her hands on her hips as she tried to catch her breath. The final flash of dissipating dark energy indicated that she had won her own duel with the hulking perversion of an Asari, but if her limping as she tried to reach the nearby control panel for the missiles was any sign, it had exhausted the Human. As much as Shepard sometimes tried to hide it around the others, Garrus knew all too well that she had limits like everyone else. She was so close to reaching the missile firing control, when the space next to her seemed to warp, and another Banshee appeared out of thin air, claws at the ready to end the life of the woman he loved.

Garrus shouted for her to jump out of the way, to run, even when he knew she was too tired for them to help, though he didn't hear the words that left his mouth. He fired another overloading energy burst from his omni-tool, he saw the satisfying flicker of death in the Reaper monster's biotic barrier, and he sighted its ugly head in his crosshairs. But when Garrus squeezed the trigger, all the Turian heard was the click of an empty thermal clip. His last clip, to be precise. _Of all the..._

In desperation, Garrus let the spent sniper rifle fall to the ground, and with a running start leapt at the Banshee. For second, he saw Shepard's face change from determined fear and anger to one of shock. Then all that he could focus on was the writhing mass of spines, cybernetics, and decaying flesh that he had tackled. Still, the weight of a Turian in full battle armor managed to bring the Banshee to the ground, though it struggled. "Go, Shepard! Get to the control pad!" he shouted at her. He saw the battle playing out in her mind through those piercing forest-green eyes of hers, but he did not see which side emerged victorious, as the monster rolled over in an attempt to shake him, forcing Garrus to headbutt the warped Reaper pawn.

Turian and Asari wrestled furiously, and Garrus was reaching his limits when the roar of a thruster igniting shattered all the other sounds around. _She made it to the missiles,_ he thought with relief. An even louder explosion echoed throughout the entirety of the war-torn human city, and Garrus knew that the Thanix artillery had hit the bullseye. The Banshee screeched in dismay at the death of one of its overlords, before the monster's hideous face exploded, showering Garrus in blood. He reflexively shut his eyes, and exhaustion led the Turian to simply collapse on top of the corpse.

The Turian felt himself being pulled up by a five-fingered hand, that of a Human, and a familiar pair of strong arms helping him to...somewhere. Garrus didn't fully regain awareness until he felt cold metal beneath him, and the shudder of being a passenger in a vehicle moving over rough terrain. Then his hard eyelids snapped open. He was sitting in a Mako, the APCs of the Humans, along with four other people. 3 of them were Humans, one of whom to Garrus' great relief was Commander Cornelia Shepard. Another, an aged, dark-skinned Human, was David Anderson, Human Systems Alliance Admiral and the leader of the resistance against the Reaper forces on his species' decimated homeworld they now fought on. The third Human Garrus didn't recognize, though he did recall that Anderson had introduced the man as his XO in the resistance. In the last corner was Shepard and Garrus' Prothean squadmate, Javik. Though Shepard did nod and seemed to brighten a little once she noticed Garrus was awake, no one spoke. That alone told him something. _We brought down the Reaper, and the way to the Citadel Beam is clear...but at what cost?_

Anderson put his hand to his ear, and then looked at each of the other passengers in turn. "Shield fleet has arrived. They're holding position just outside Earth's farthest Lagrange Point. Sword is sustaining heavy casualties, though they are managing to keep the Reapers tied up in orbit, and they've even taken out several of the damn things." Javik gave a pleased snort at this, and Anderson finished. "Admiral Hackett is certain Shield fleet can cut a path to the Citadel for the Crucible, once we bring the Ward arms down."

"I take it the point we're even bothering with preparing for that is because the way to the Beam is clear?" Garrus asked.

"Yes." Anderson responded, "The Thanix missiles annihilated the Reaper Destroyer guarding it, once uplinked with the Normandy's targeting computers. Approximately 60% of Hammer force is either not responding or confirmed KIA, but we've taken pretty much everything within a block of the beam itself." _Too many,_ Garrus thought. _But ultimately just another subtraction equation in the ruthless calculus of this damn war._

"So now all that's left for us is just to get to that perimeter, and run like hell for the giant glowing tower." Shepard said sarcastically, though the laugh she and her Turian boyfriend subsequently shared was ultimately hollow.

"At least our forces will have killed most of the Reapers in the area. We can watch the Crucible annihilate the rest of them in relative peace." Javik responded.

"It may not be so easy, Commander." the voice of Joker, the Normandy's pilot, came. "EDI's picking up something at the edge of the battle you're not gonna like."

"Just give me the bad news, Joker." Shepard snapped.

It was EDI who answered: "We have almost all of the Reaper forces in orbit fully committed, but the Reaper known as Harbinger has broken off from the battle along with a small escort force. Its projected reentry flight path given current velocity telemetry suggests that it is heading straight for the beam."

"Well, isn't that just brilliant." Garrus growled. "Guess old Harbinger had to come down here and 'assume direct control' over the battle, didn't it?" He couldn't help but flex his mandibles in a sarcastic Turian smile when he saw his love roll her eyes.

"This doesn't change much." Shepard said. "We still need to get what we can of Hammer to the beam and up into the Citadel. Now we just have to do it with an angry Reaper over our heads."

"Easier said than done." the Human Admiral's XO remarked. _You got that right._

The rest of the trip passed in silence, filled only by the shuffle and clinking of their battle armor as they shifted in their seats, their breath heavy with anticipation and adrenaline, and the groan and rumble of the vehicle that they rode in. Soon, that rumble was joined by others, close by, as they neared the rest of what was left of the Hammer ground forces. Garrus saw Anderson's finger raise to his ear as he fiddled with his omni-tool. "We're here." the Human said, and knocked on the side door of the Mako. The armored door slid up, the quintet of passengers moved forward, and Garrus felt his feet touch back down.

The charred soil was soft, rough enough to not risk tripping but not an impediment either. He looked up from his feet and readied his rifle, but a second later, the Turian blinked. The massive Reaper acceleration beam that lay before them, the link between the planet's surface and their objective, glowed like a miniature sun. Around them, more soldiers and Makos already were advancing on the beam. The cordoned area between where they had stopped and their goal was largely an empty plain of finely ground debris, but the last pocket of resistance from the Reaper ground forces had created a makeshift entrenchment from the decimated city to prevent Hammer from reaching it. Their return fire was thin, though, and erratic. _We might actually win this._

Garrus saw Shepard standing a few meters in front of him, frozen. The wind rustled her light brown hair, and her armor shifted slightly with the rise and fall of her chest, taking a deep breath before the final push. Her fingers, so small and light when she cupped the fringes of his face in them during that final moment of peace back at forward command, tightened around the grip of her pistol. "We're going to end them today, Garrus." she said, looking back at him. "Who knew that day you bumped into me in the Lower Wards would lead to us ending this horror together?"

"From the moment I met you, I thought to myself: that Human is going to make the galaxy a hell of a lot better of a place, or burn it trying." the Turian replied, placing his hand on her shoulder. "In these past 4 years, I've seen you do just that. And Spirits know whatever I did to deserve the honor of being by your side through all of that, let alone in your bed."

"There really is no Shepard without Vakarian." she chuckled lightly at his flirting. "Come on. We've got a race of bloated cyber-squids to kill."

Together, Turian and Human, man and woman, protégée and mentor, lovers, walked to where the rest of Anderson's troops were assembling for the final push. "Hammer force is assembled, Commander." Javik reported as they approached.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Shepard asked.

"What indeed." the Prothean said, before turning to Anderson. "Admiral, the Commander is ready."

Anderson nodded, and activated his omni-tool, broadcasting across all Hammer frequencies. "HAMMER FORCE, TAKE THAT BEAM!" Garrus had to put his hands to his skull as the battlefield practically shook with the resounding battle cry of soldiers from a dozen different species, brought here for the purpose of fighting to save all sentient life in the galaxy. Then, the final charge began.

Garrus and Javik ran close behind Shepard, mowing down any Reaper stragglers foolish enough to get in their way. He had his Vindicator assault rifle out, his sniping skills useless on the move like this. Shepard didn't even bother with her biotics, simply unloaded a few high-caliber rounds from her Paladin pistol into anything that got in her way.

Garrus' vision was so focused on simply what lay ahead that he only looked up when half the soldiers in front of him seemed to freeze in terror at something up in the sky. The Turian cast a glance above him, and wished he hadn't. Descending from the clouds like the nightmarish monsters that dwelled in the darkest corners of every species' mythology was Harbinger, the closest thing the Reapers had to a leader and the largest of the living skyscrapers of death. The haunting howl it emitted as its many massive legs settled on the desolate battlefield, right in front of the beam, was a sound Garrus knew he would remember for the rest of his life. _And it's looking like that's only going to be a few more seconds._

Lances of white-hot metal shot out of Harbinger's "eyes", of which there was an absurd amount by even Prothean standards. The charge was even more desperate now, as whole squads and vehicles were blasted into smithereens by the Reaper's barrage. The air itself burned on Garrus' skin, so he could only imagine how it cooked those who had not grown up on the sun-ravaged surface of Palaven. All around him, explosions rang out, and soldiers from a dozen races screamed out in pain and terror as they suddenly perished. Every time another one of the ear-splitting whines of Harbinger's firing mechanism sounded, Shepard, Garrus, and Javik looked to each other, checking that they were still there.

It was during one of those moments that Garrus saw a blinding flash of light right in front of him, and his eyes reflexively shut for. A second. When they opened, the Mako that had been just ahead of their squad, about 2/3 of the way towards the beam, was gone. Garrus heard the sound of something burning and falling, and looked up to see that the APC had been blasted off of the ground, and the flaming wreck that was left was now coming back down right in front of him. _Oh...shit._

Through all the hell Garrus had been through over the years, as a soldier, a cop, a Spectre candidate, a vigilante, and now a leader in the Turian resistance against the Reapers, he had had more than the average Turian's fair share of pain. And that was coming from a species whose main government mandated several years of military service to obtain any real measure of citizenship. Of those experiences, only two topped the agony he felt as the hood of the wreck practically blindsided his chest; the time he took a gunship rocket to the side of his head, which left a pretty impressive scar on the right side of his face, and the emotional pang as he watched from the moon of Menae as the Reapers descended to the surface of the Turian homeworld to burn the city he had grown up in. _Ignore the pain,_ he thought. _Shepard might have gotten hit too, she was only just ahead of the falling wreck. You have to get to Shepard._

Less than a minute of struggling to get out from underneath the wreckage told Garrus that his carapace had been punctured in at least 3 places, and a couple ribs were broken. His left leg would join them if he continued, if it hadn't already. He gritted his teeth, ready to try to squirm his way out anyway, when the weight of the burning wreckage suddenly disappeared. Stifling a cry of pain, Garrus managed to stand up, just barely. Shepard was there in front of him, panting, tears visible in her eyes. The slight blue glow that surrounded her stabbed at Garrus' heart. _She must have almost killed herself, overexerting her biotics like that to push that thing. Damn it, you're too protective for your own good sometimes, Shepard._ The only sound that came out was a low, pained rasp.

Shepard ran over to him, helping him up despite clearly having drained herself. She threw his arm over her shoulder, and began hauling him back, away from the battle and the beam, as Harbinger tore apart more and more of Hammer force. He tried to resist, tried to tell her to leave him, to get to the beam and survive, that the survival of the love of his life was infinitely more important than his own. But when he tried to summon the words, all that came out was a cough that burned like fire, and he saw the light blue of his own blood splatter onto her armor.

"I'm sorry." she said, and bent down. Garrus, kept up precariously by her shoulder and his one good leg, saw that she was bending down to another burned body on the ground, which seemed to all the world to be devoid of life until it shuddered with breath as she touched it. Shepard helped the burned figure back up onto their feet, and Garrus shuddered as he recognized Javik. In addition to the burns all over his body, likely worse than Garrus' own, a small, jagged piece of metal had speared itself right through the fore of the Prothean's pair of left eyes. Welcome to the club, Prothy. Garrus thought darkly, and shuddered again.

A comrade supported, limping, on either side, Shepard slowly trudged away from the beam. In hindsight, Garrus considered it a miracle that Harbinger's blasts didn't touch them, or perhaps it was a simple mistake on the Reaper's part. "Shepard..." Garrus said, struggling to get the words out without garbling them by falling into another bloody cough, "we're going to die out here anyway. You need to get to the beam. I..." Despite his best efforts, he was again interrupted by another violent expulsion of blue blood via coughing.

"Garrus..." Shepard began, a hint of warm fire in her voice.

"I promise..." he said, weakly raising a hand to quiet her as he fought down the blood and the shuddering, "I promise I'll save that seat for you...at that bar."

"Garrus, I already called the Normandy. After a Harbinger came down here it left a weakness up in the Reaper orbital lines, and the 79th flotilla punched a Joker-sized hole."

"Did someone call my name?" the pilot's voice came over the comm, and Harbinger gave a metallic screech of what Garrus assumed was rage right before an orbital bombardment blasted the Reaper right in its "face". A ragged cheer went through the few surviving soldiers, and the Normandy SR2 flew out of the resulting smoke cloud. _Joker made it through,_ Garrus thought. _That damn Human actually made it._

The ship flew down in front of them, hovering slightly above the charred remains of a gunship Harbinger had shot down moments earlier. Garrus tried to pull away, tried to WILL the bones in his punctured frame back together. The hangar ramp door slid open with an agonizingly slow groan, and a familiar Quarian girl stepped down to its edge, pistol in hand. Though the weapon looked cumbersome in her small two-fingered hand, it barked without losing control, before being holstered so that its wielder could rapidly tap a sequence onto her omni-tool. The ramp finally lowered to the ground, and at the same time a holographic drone sprung to life from the Quarian Tali's omni-tool, whizzing out of the Normandy to hunt down any Reapers not killed by the few Hammer survivors or Harbinger's own friendly fire.

Several Human Alliance marines joined Tali in covering them, and the girl rushed over to where Shepard was limping forward with Garrus and Javik over her shoulders. "Here, take him." She said, gently sliding the Turian into the arms of Tali and one of the marines. "Shepard, no! There's more than enough of Hammer left to just walk a few kilometers in the Citadel and press a button."

"I have to go, Garrus. You know that. For all we know, the Citadel is crawling with Reaper forces." she said, and he knew that it pained her to leave him behind.

 _Well, I don't care if it hurts like that time I took a rocket to the face ten times over, I am not letting you go out there without me to watch your six._ "Without me? Like hell you are!" He turned to one of the marines, and shouted, "Get Chakwas down here with some medi-gel and some dextro painkillers, and I'll be good as new. It takes more than a Reaper to kill me, and you know it! If you're going in there, then I'm going with you."

He saw how much the decision hurt her, and Garrus realized he was being selfish. He knew it, and she knew it. He knew from the watering he saw in the corner of her eyes that if she really could, in this moment, she'd be just as selfish. But that wasn't her, and it wasn't him.

Shepard touched one finger to her temple, and put the one from her other hand on his forehead, where she'd sometimes kiss him as they lay together in her quarters back on the Normandy. He loved the times she did that, and so he ached all the more as she spoke. "My mind says I have to get to that beam," she moved her fingers to their respective chests. "And my heart says to stay here, and make sure you're ok, so we can watch as either the world ends, or a new one begins." She pulled her hand away, and then took both of them to cradle his wounded body in her arms. Garrus gasped lightly at this, but it came out as more of a blood-clogged rasp. "But in my soul, I know that I have to make sure the Crucible succeeds. I was here when this thing started, and I have to be the one who ends it."

Already, her words were winning against the senseless rebellion of Garrus' desires. Somberly accepting it, he knew what he had to say. _We've said it a hundred times, in as many ways,_ Garrus thought. In those desperate moments hunting the Collectors, as they reveled in their unexpected survival and return from the Omega 4 Relay, when he had to endure the cultural and romantic pain of watching his commander and lover leave the Normandy to face her government for actions that may well have bought the galaxy enough time to get where they were now. They had kept it in during their subdued, reunion on Menae, but when Shepard came to make sure he got settled back in his own post in the gunnery station, she'd welcomed him back with her usual awkward flair. On their devil-may-care date on the roof of the Presidium, they'd first spoken the words. Again and again. _I refuse to accept that this is the end, he thought, but this is different._

His brief introspection was broken by the otherworldly howl, more a screech now, that came from Harbinger. "Commander…" Tali started, impatience clouding the nervous concern in her natural tone, "We need to get out him and Javik out of here before Harbinger recovers, and you need to get to that beam. I...I'm sorry, Shepard...but you NEED TO GO!" Shepard was shaken out of her own thoughts by the rebuke, which was further punctuated as Tali and the Alliance Marines were forced to lay down more cover fire.

Javik started to stand, groaning and limping in pain, but he gave the Humans' version of a salute to Shepard as a marine escorted him to the sickbay. Tali shook her head, and then keyed something on her omni-tool. Not yet! Garrus thought as he left the ramp beneath him begin to retract back into the Normandy. "Garrus." Shepard said, and as the love of his life spoke the Turian felt as if the whole rest of the world, the Galaxy burning in the Reaper's genocidal rampage, seemed to stop for a moment, "No matter what happens up there, no matter whether I die up there trying to reach the Crucible, or if the Reapers take me with them when they die screaming, know this; I will, always, love you."

Sophisticated tear ducts were an almost strictly mammalian trait, Garrus remembered from his studies of introductory xenobiology in boot camp. Asari,Humans, and the mammo-reptilian Drell were the only species he'd ever seen cry. Volus and Quarians probably did too, but as they both spent almost their entire lives when around other species in environmentally-sealed suits, he'd never witnessed it. As a species with distinctly avian evolutionary roots, Turians were thus exempt from this aspect of body language, but had his species possesed them, Garrus knew he'd be as bleary-eyed as Shepard now was. Even though his throat burned, it was more emotional than physical pain that laced his voice when he replied: "I...I love you too. Please...come back to me."

The brown-haired woman simply nodded, blinking away her own tears, before turning back to the Citadel beam, where Harbinger was finally recovering. Garrus saw the tension in her back muscles as she mentally and physically steeled herself for battle, and then drew her trusty Locust submachine gun and charged forward. He watched her go, able to see less and less as the Normandy's cargo door closed, before the ramp finally finished with a loud clang, and his sight of her was cut off.

Then the physical pain he had been fighting down ever since he got free of the Mako wreckage returned, with a vengeance. In an agonized noise more akin to a hiss than anything, he collapsed onto the floor of the cargo bay. The last thing he heard was Tali frantically shouting his name, and then everything went black.

Garrus snapped awake, quickly jerking his head up to look at his surroundings, and immediately regretted it. A lance of sharp pain shot through his upper torso, and another agonized hiss escaped his mouth, and he winced. _Damn, that hurts._ Garrus opened his eyes again, as the pain slowly fell from a blaze to a simmer, to the familiar sight of the the Normandy's sickbay. He tried to sit up on the medical bed he'd been placed on, despite another stabbing jolt of agony. He could see Chakwas attending to Javik, though the amount of medical equipment that surrounded the Prothean could tell him little about his comrade's condition other than that he was alive. _Good, he's back. We all made ou-_

 _Shepard,_ Garrus thought, and froze. _Where's Shepard?_ He saw no one but Chakwas and Javik. Even Tali, who Garrus faintly remembered being the one to carry him in, was there. _She must be busy with something, right? There's no way she'd just…_

The lump that Garrus could feel forming in his throat was somehow even worse than his physical injuries, something that at the same time made no sense, and all the sense in the world. Finally, the lump forced words out of his mouth "Whe-"

The fit of choking that cut him off got Chakwas' attention, and an immediate reproach: "Garrus! Lie back down, you're barely stable as it is!".

However, neither the rebuke or the glare she gave Garrus stopped him from trying to speak again. In fact, a terrified curiosity about the answer he would recieve spawned when he noticed something. _I've served more than three years aboard the Normandy with Chakwas, and I've never heard her talk like that,_ he thought. _That's not just the strain of tending the wounded I hear, that's...oh no._ "Where...where is Shepard?"

The petrified look on Chakwas' face at this seemingly simple question tore Garrus mind apart more than anything. _No, I refuse! I should have gone with her, I should have told Tali and Chakwas to fuck off. I SHOULD HAVE GONE WITH HER! NO!_ Garrus screamed within himself, and he only realized he was raising his talons to his head in despair when the reminder that one was still in a cast pierced through the cacophony of mental panic. All this time, Chakwas had said nothing, although Garrus saw out of the corner of his eye that she had slipped a syringe into her hands, likely a dextro tranquilizer, just in case. "She made it to the Citadel, I saw her get within a few meters of the damn thing! Where is Shepard?!"

"Shepard made it to the Citadel…" Chakwas said carefully, "We know because the ward arms opened and the Crucible docked with it. Then a blue energy pulse radiated out of the Citadel, which Liara said was the Crucible activating...but it didn't kill the Reapers. I don't know what happened, but it seemed like they got scared all of a sudden, and started running away from the battle. The pulse spread through Earth's solar system, heading for the relay. It started accelerating, and any ship that stayed in-system would have been destroyed...the Citadel likely suffered the same fate. Joker tried to go back for her, but it was too dangerous to turn around. Garrus, I'm sorry…"

The agonized howl that followed echoed throughout the crew deck of the Normandy for several minutes.

Author's notes: Thank you for reading the first chapter of Dea et Machina! I hope you loved it, and please tell me what you think in reviews! I don't have a concrete estimate of when the next chapter will be completed, but as always if a lot of readers seem to like it the story will get some priority in my writing. Once, again thank you, I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you again with the next chapter!


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